


Amuse Bouche

by Davechicken



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M, Terrible not very bilingual food jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-26 01:37:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20922029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davechicken/pseuds/Davechicken
Summary: Aziraphale does not speak croissant. He says.





	Amuse Bouche

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lolaetcaetera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lolaetcaetera/gifts).

> For Lola, who agrees that Aziraphale is a lazy ass angel who should really learn French.
> 
> Who also did this [LOVELY ART](https://www.instagram.com/p/B50n_mYAOSc/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet)!

It started out innocently (hah) enough.

As most things do. In an executioner’s cell. In revolutionary France.

You know.

What with a perilously non-self-preserving angel and his obsession with both _haute cuisine_ and high fashion.

Eternal life, older than the Earth herself, and he hadn’t bloody learned French? French. It was high up there with Italian for ‘language most useful for an Epicurean gourmand’. Even _gourmand_ was French. 

Not that Aziraphale didn’t eat other dishes. He did. He liked stroganoffs and he liked quesadillas and sushi and toad in the hole and - though he’s certain the angel won’t admit it - he probably loved blooming onions and burgers bigger than his head. He just… liked food.

But he also liked to show off, and if you were showing off, apparently you ordered _à la carte_ and you ordered dishes that took longer to prepare than to eat. Maybe it was pufferfish, that might actually kill you. Or larks’ tongues. Or any number of other insanely overly-complicated and very-much _not English_ food. 

(Crowley is also sure Aziraphale has tried a deep fried Mars bar, but the angel refuses to answer when pushed.)

So, his refusal to learn French has never made sense. Unless (as he suspects) it’s an excuse to demand Crowley comes along with him.

“I know all of the food terms perfectly well, my dear.”

“Right. Sure.”

“I do! So I can order the food, just not make small talk.”

“And you can’t just order the food and then eat?”

“It would be impolite.”

“So… learn?”

He could do. Easy as read a book. He knows enough of the damn things. And if it were a storage issue, he could just forget some obscure dialect. Or Welsh.

It brought on the pout again.

“You do not know every dish.”

“I do.”

“Do not!”

“I do too! And this is childish! Will you just come to--”

So Crowley had gotten frustrated and started naming dishes. “_Mille feuille._”

“Yes?”

“So?”

“It’s a dessert.”

“It means ‘a thousand sheets’.”

“I do not need to learn what it means, only what it tastes like. And it tastes delicious.”

So Crowley took it upon himself to summon a menu from the place they had intended to go. Or, rather, Aziraphale had intended to go. And he started to read the items off, explaining what each dish really meant.

‘Coq au vin’ was the low point. How did you say ‘wine cock’ with a straight face? You bit your mouth is how. And it wasn’t even that hard to guess that one.

So he had started to get inventive. Made up things. Ridiculous things. Things that couldn’t possibly exist.

Things like ‘barbe à papa’ (dad’s beard). ‘Pompe à l'huile’ (oil pump). ‘Raclette’ (scrapings). He was just throwing words together, and Aziraphale was determinedly nodding and insisting they were real. 

Crowley ended up unable to deny it in case he was wrong. What if they really were dishes? What if he was the gauche one?

So. Whether they were or not before each argument (discussion) they were by the end of it. Bouchée à la reine? (Queen’s mouth?) Check. ‘Croque en bouche’? (Crunchy mouth thing.) Sure. ‘Baeckeoffe’? Then let’s make a TV show with people competing and pretend it came from the same thing. 

He started getting silly. Making sounds. Choucroute garnie. Dressed cabbage. (Who would WANT THAT?) Knack. That wasn’t even French, it was just an English word. But now it was a sausage thing. Clapassade. Four-fours. Cream on fire. Pot on fire. Everything on fire. Cream on everything. Chicken in cream on fire. Balls. Random female names. Cheese soup. Eat it all. Bouillabaisse.

Nothing seemed too ridiculous for Aziraphale. And Crowley started panicking, throwing the oddest collection of words and sounds and apparently inventing the most delicious things known to mankind (according to the angel, anyway).

Which is why his life is now a lie and any time he’s asked to go along to translate, he twitches, wondering what new monstrosity he will have made to have always existed by the end of the night. All this meddling with time and memory is certainly going to be noticed at some point. There’s only so many old cook books he can mir-- marvellously amend. 

He’s hiding his attention looking for the racier books on the shelves as the angel wheedles and looks sad and mournful and does the thing with his lower lip that is so totally cheating. If he doesn’t look, he won’t be tempted.

“Je vous en prie!” the angel wheedles, his accent perfect. And his double-entendre most perfectly entendu. 

“_Mon ange_,” Crowley growls, whirling and catching the puppy dog eyes.

“So you’ll come with me?”

He’s whipped. Like cream. And likely there’ll be another dish invented before the end of the night. ‘Strangled Angel’, maybe.

“Fine.”

Hands clasp in delight, and the storm has passed again.

Strangled Angel, followed by Drowned Demon and maybe a side order of Why Do I Never Learn.

That one probably has cabbage in, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Mistakes all mine. Sorry. Been a while. Je suis desole.


End file.
